Sunday, October 23, 2005

To quote the Great Fred Flintstone: "WILMAAA!!!"

I had a discussion with a friend today on what was "real", and she said that while my (only hinted-at - don't need her world made of Jell-O since I like visiting world's that are not) theories may be valuable, I couldn't deny the images we were seeing on TV. She also said that she just couldn't take the suffering and death and destruction, and thus has to tune out nearly everything but the headlines.

I countered with a yes... but.

Stepping back for a minute, I made the simple point that if something you do is making you feel "worse", then perhaps you should stop it. If that's the "news", then perhaps you should stop watching it, especially when there are other options for information besides Magic 8-Ball's and sheep entrails.

Stepping up for a minute, I also suggested that ALL information is based on editorial decisions, from what we wear to what we say, and that obviously includes the news. The images we see are meant to make us feel terrible and powerless, and don't include a tonne of context.

Though we've seen a half-dozen hurricanes recently, I don't know a damn thing about them - and neither does anybody I know despite their authoritative repetition of the banalities of evil that pass for analysis on TV. Experts are invited on shows to merely say that "it's coming and may hit here", and discuss the basics such as the speed of the winds and category of hurricane and how we should do what the government tells us.

There is no push for "science", no reason for why this is happening now, and no reason they can't be predicted or stopped in some fashion.

I mean, we (may have - oops, that there may be pushing it) put a man on the moon, and yet, we can't send a big ol' balloon full of hot air (like Rush Limbaugh) up to chill out a cloud or two?

Okay, I'm just theorizing; really, I'm not saying I have any answers, but I'm damn sure somebody who knows a thing or two-thousand about this does.

So, before you tell me I'm crazy, tell me you're right.

No, "really" right.

Not "we gotta kill 'em over there before they kill us over here" right.

There's a huge difference.

(...)

In fact, the best source of "news" I've ever seen has someone who's been professionally contradicting the official garbage for a hell of a long time now, so why not give him a chance to explain for all our sakes...

Buried under the constantly updated reports of Hurricane Wilma, its increasing or decreasing strength and where it will make landfall, is the reality that the government already has developed technology enabling control and reduction of hurricanes.

However, unsurprisingly they have no shown no willingness to use it to save lives or businesses as we come to the conclusion of what many are calling the most unprecedented hurricane season in history.

Former Naval physicist Ben Livingston briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson on hurricane control technology 40 years ago and continues to try to educate the public on its potential effectiveness today.

During a recent appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Livingston outlined the basics of the technology.

"A hurricane is made up of energy sails and each of those sails adds to the ferocity of it. It was proven in 1974 by an international project that these energy sails exist and that they are the reason that hurricanes can develop and grow move and cause damages. So there's no reason to attack the hurricane in total but just to fly in to the right front quadrant primarily relative to the direction the storm is moving in and seed those energy sails that are converging and making the rain and wind velocity increase in the front part of a hurricane." Livingston asserted.

He went on to explain exactly how to minimize and control the hurricane:

"We would be trying to destroy or at least grossly reduce the velocity in these individual energy sails by seeding the clouds with silver iodide in the top part of the cloud... and those tops would then have so many small droplets in them that the prevailing wind just blows them away and so an energy sail would be neutralized until it can regroup which may be several hours later."

The seeding process may sound complicated but it is not at all. There would be no need for more than two small aircraft at a time to safely fly upwards into the hurricane.

"We're carrying more cloud seeding material on one airplane now, over 800% more on each plane than we had during Project Storm Fury" (The project set up by the US Government to discover how to control hurricanes in the 60s). Livingston added.

Alex put the question to Livingston, if it is so simple to do and the government knows how to do it and has been doing it since the 60s then why did they not attempt to minimize hurricane Katrina?

"This is a long story with a deep history. Back in the mid 50s, 1954 or so, the government allotted the first amount of money for weather modification and weather control practices to the US weather Bureau to the tune of about 30 million dollars." Livingston said.

"Their charge was to employ the most brilliant scientists around the world, and meteorologists and physicists, to work out a concept for reducing damages from hurricanes. What brought that on was that we had three tremendous hurricanes in 1953 and '54 that affected the twelve northeastern states... Basically The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was formed to take that responsibility." He went on to say.

With Florida residents now being urged to evacuate and weather experts still unsure of Hurricane Wilma's exact path, how long will it be before public interest peaks in weather control technologies and real pressure is applied to force the government into using them?

We won't be holding our breath.

The deliberate sabotage of relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent exploitation of chaos used to enact police state measures and gun confiscations reminds us of the fact that, despite having tools at its disposal to make the situation better, government always steps in to turn a bad dream into a nightmare.